Hands
by Anna Skyfox
Summary: A somewhat different take on Sirius and Remus post Snape's visit to the whomping willow tunnel, in which Sirius does not feel so much a need to apologize for his actions.


He found me out alone on the balcony overlooking the grounds. I didn't turn. He was shadow quiet, but his presence filled my senses until they overflowed. He padded over and sat down beside me without being invited. We stared together into the darkness. I felt tears stinging under my eyelids. Time stretched and broke. He was still as the tears fell unchecked, and I cursed and sniffled audibly.

He reached out then, one sleeve of his fitted black shirt tugged down over his palm to wipe away a track of cries from my cheek with the heel of his hand. I turned against it with a jerk, as if he'd struck me.

"Don't," I said.

He stiffened but did not pull away.

"Moony-" confusion was glistening like mourning in his stormy eyes and I pushed his hand away as I moved to stand.

"Moony!" he had gained some urgency now, and that strong hand, rough and tanned from hours in the air with a Beater's bat, latched onto my sleeve. Pulling my arm away, I staggered to my feet. My balance was off and I seized forward. I slammed into the cobblestones, hearing my robes rip, my knees rattling all the way up into my teeth. He was by my side in an instant.

"Remus," he was murmuring, over and over again. And then his hands were everywhere- on my back, then my neck, then my jaw, forcing my face up, pushing back my hair.

I rounded then and punched him hard across the face.

"Don't!" I choked out, my palms falling to the ground in front of me. My body was heaving. All I could see was salt water and sandy strands before my eyes.

"How. Could. You?" Each word was an epic effort for me, requiring a full breath. I leaned back on my heels, tossing my eyes skyward as I spoke, before dropping them to this boy before me.

He was sprawled backward; his long legs crooked against the ground, one knee up where he'd caught most of his weight. His upper body was propped up on his elbows and he was holding a hand to his jaw. His gray gaze seemed to crackle.

"Feel better now?" his tone was light and I shook my head numbly, my mouth working.

"Better? I-" my teeth clicked shut sharply, a hurt that ached me through to places I didn't know I had radiating out my limbs and ebbing slowly.

"Yes," I stared back at him, what I'm sure was a mixture of blatant bewilderment and despair in my face. "Yes. I do."

He narrowed those electric eyes at me and gave one swipe to his chin before rolling, cat like, to his feet.

"You hit like a girl, Moony."

"Forgive me if I'm not so adept at grunt brutality as you," I snapped. My strength seemed to give out and I fell back against the wall separating the balcony from oblivion. His gaze darted away from mine, up and out into the night.

"I wouldn't want you to be," the softness in his voice caught me off guard. It was not apologetic, but very very sad. I didn't know what to say. Words that had been writhing like snakes around my tongue for a week- words like betrayal, and soulless, and hatred, and Black- boiled up to die on my lips.

He looked frightening staring out into the night like that, his body taut, every inch of lean muscle stretched, as he balanced effortlessly in a crouch on the balls of his feet. His eyelids were heavy, like he hadn't slept in years, which I knew was not far off, and a resigned tragedy had settled into his sharp slashing features. His face looked ancient.

"It's not as if I planned it, Remus," he closed his eyes, an almost imperceptible shiver running down to his hands, which trembled, "and I _am_ sorry. But I don't regret it."

He opened his stare to the sky once more and then steadily turned it on me.

"I don't regret it," he said.

I felt myself crushing, crumbling easily under the weight of him, of that haunted expression, of the world, of the complete desperate futility I felt. My own eyes closed against it, tears slipping again. My hands crawled back against the sides of my head and fisted in my hair as if I could tear myself apart and make it stop.

"Would you rather I'd killed him?" his question was casual, almost flippant, and my eyes snapped open. His head was cocked to the side in a very boyish look of curiosity, his black hair moving on the cold breeze.

"I would have," he said.

"You almost did," I somehow managed to grind the words out through teeth that seemed to be chattering, "Or rather, you almost got me to."

But Sirius barked a laugh.

"Don't be daft, Remus. _I _was there. And James was there. We wouldn't have let the wolf get near him. We _didn't_-"

"_James! James_ didn't, Sirius," I cut him off desperately, hating how strangled I sounded, how weak, "_James_ didn't let me get to him. _James_ is the one who pulled Snape out."

"And I was just hanging about in the tunnel having a laugh, was I? You really think so little of me, Remus?"

There was pain there, in his voice, in his body, in those burning smoking eyes.

"You were with me," I breathed, realization hitting me like a physical force.

"Well, where the bloody fuck else would I be?" it was a whip crack and I flinched, but he continued, his body shaking with emotion.

"He _saw_ you go out to the tunnel, Remus. He'd been watching you that night. He's been watching you for weeks. He hates you. He was _going_ to find out. I had to make sure it was on our terms."

My mouth did not seem to be working, or my lungs. I was captivated by the simplicity it seemed to have in his mind. My own insides were rioting with twisting convoluted screaming, and yet, I knew what he was saying was true. I had felt Snape's eyes on my movements for a long time, heard the complete revulsion in his words when they were directed toward me-revulsion I accepted but hadn't understood. _There is no way he could know_, I had told myself. But Sirus and James had been able to connect the dots much sooner than this, and Severus Snape was far from stupid.

Sirius stood up.

"Hate me if you want," he bit at the words as if they were glass in his mouth. "I didn't come up here to ask for forgiveness. I just had to make sure that you understand that I didn't do it to hurt you. I would _never_-"

He stopped suddenly, his hands rising to his hips at the same time that his head dropped wearily. He expelled a long breath to the ground before he looked up at me again.

"Or Snape. I didn't actually do it to hurt Snape either," his lip curled in an ironic way, "But he's terrified now. He'll leave you alone. And he'll never tell. Dumbledore will make sure of that. It was the only way."

We stared at each other for several long moments; his jaw locked, his throat working, tears still running down my face. Then he turned away.

"Sirius!" his name had burst from my mouth before I had thought it, and he stopped, his back still facing me. I forced my legs under me and scrambled to my feet.

"You said you would have killed him," my hands itched, twitching slightly at my sides, I wanted to touch him so badly. His shoulders shifted, almost as if he knew.

"I didn't think you'd look favorably upon it if I did," he tossed it over his shoulder but I could hear the bitter sneer on his lips. "Silly me, I thought you might take it badly. You know, be _angry_ with me."

"But you wouldn't," my feet seemed to be moving of their own accord, carefully closing the distance between us until I was inches from him, "You wouldn't really."

It was a question, though I didn't want it to be.

He turned, and what I saw in him then I still don't have a name for, even now. It was as if a black hole of emotion had taken residence in his face, so torrential that I involuntarily took half a step back when it came at me. There was something soft, like sorrow, and something vulnerable, like anguish or despair, and something hollow, like heartbreak, and something hard, like iron will. And something else . . .

"There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you, Moony," he said.

And then he walked away, leaving me with my empty hands.


End file.
